Well after spending most of the weekend looking at commercial kitchen locations it is great to read these posts!

So here is the status report:

The company has been formed and most of the initial financing has been setup.

As I have stated above I have spent some time searching for some commercial kitchen space to setup shop in.

My vow when I decided to start this was to make sure that any of my sauces, rubs or marinades do not get turned into a mass production food item filled with a bunch of preservatives. The way that most companies produce their product is to outsource the production to a Kitchen that will produce the product for them and intern changing the quality of ingredients and then the creator never really does any kind of quality control. I have decided that the only way this sauce would be made was in a commerical kitchen facility that I owned and everyone worked directly for me - that way I can ensure the quality ingredients and I will taste every single batch of product that is produced! Therefore this has added a bit of a delay, but I feel that it is definately worth it.

The receipes have been finalized and have been converted to "larger production" batches. Samples have been sent to a nurtitionist to get our nutritiional values

Bottle size and shapes have been narowed down to 4 or 5 and the labels are being designed by my graphic artist along with the logo for the company. Website is in production and when something is available to post I will share the web address.

I was thinking about having everyone vote on the label design - my graphic designer is working on about 8 different designs and I figured this board would be a great place to get some customer opinions - I will post some info when they are finished

Hey it is great to see someone from St. Louis on the board! We are starting the kitchen just for the sauces, rubs and marinades at first and then also to help with the food production for any catering events that we are doing. The goal is to start off with the sauces and see how things go, but I would love to open a resturant sometime in the future. As far as where the sauces, rubs and marinades will be available we are currently talking to a few of the grocery chains in St. Louis as well as many of the specialty food retailers and of course it will be available online as well. I will try to keep everyone updated with our progress..

On a side note, anybody else make their own sauces? I saw a 'kit' at Wally World awhile back and chuckled to myself. I don't need a kit to make a sauce.

KIT??? WE DON'T NEED NO STEENKIN KITS!!!!!

I'ds be interested to see what's in this "kit". Dried spices and powdered ketchup? Or just spice powder to which you add ketchup and vinegar? YUK!

A sauce is the easiest thing in the world to make, and since I started making mine fresh, we can't toleratre any bottled sauce. Perhaps Dkirn's might be good, but without preservatives, will they stay good during warehousing and shipping? Sorry Dkirrn, but homemade is usually better.

IIRC, the "kit" consisted of nothing more than some dried spices, and a few plastic bottles, and containers. I'm sure there would probably have been a recipe or two in there as well. However, I never opened the box so I don't know for sure.

My sister in law gave me a hot sauce kit for Christmas, bless her heart she tries well, but it too remains unopened. I suppose that one of these days when I'm really bored I'll open it up. When I do I'll let you know how it turns out.